The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Review: Aiming For the Top
by Ryan Smith on July 2, 2015 11:15 AM ESTCrysis 3
Still one of our most punishing benchmarks, Crysis 3 needs no introduction. With Crysis 3, Crytek has gone back to trying to kill computers and still holds the “most punishing shooter” title in our benchmark suite. Only in a handful of setups can we even run Crysis 3 at its highest (Very High) settings, and that’s still without AA. Crysis 1 was an excellent template for the kind of performance required to drive games for the next few years, and Crysis 3 looks to be much the same for 2015.
A pure and strenuous DirectX 11 test, Crysis 3 in this case is a pretty decent bellwether for the overall state of the R9 Fury X. Once again the card trails the GTX 980 Ti, but not by quite as much as we saw in Battlefield 4. In this case the gap is 6-7% at 4K, and 12% at 1440p, not too far off of 4% and 10% respectively. This test hits the shaders pretty hard, so of our tried and true benchmarks I was expecting this to be one of the better games for AMD, so the results in a sense do end up as surprising.
In any case, on an absolute basis this is also a good example of the 4K quality tradeoff. R9 Fury X is fast enough to deliver 1440p at high quality settings over 60fps, or 4K with reduced quality settings over 60fps. Otherwise if you want 4K with high quality settings, the performance hit means a framerate average in just the 30s.
Otherwise the gains over the R9 290XU are quite good. The R9 Fury X picks up 38-40% at 4K, and 36% at 1440p. This trends relatively close to our 40% expectations for the card, reinforcing just how big of a leap the card is for AMD.
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TallestJon96 - Saturday, July 4, 2015 - link
This card is not the disappointment people make it out to be. One month ago this card would have been a MASSIVE success. What is strange to me is that they didn't reduce price, even slightly to compete with the new 980 ti. I suspect it was to avoid a price war, but I would say at $600 this card is attractive, but at $650 you only really want it for water cooling. I suspect the price will drop more quickly than the 980 ti.mccoy3 - Saturday, July 4, 2015 - link
So it is as expensive as the 980Ti by delivering less performance and requires watercooling. Once Nvidia settles for a TITAN Y including HBM, its all over for the red guys.just4U - Saturday, July 4, 2015 - link
Well that would be great news for AMD though wouldn't it since Nvidia would have to pay for the use of HBM in some form or another..Oxford Guy - Saturday, July 4, 2015 - link
AMD could have released a hot leaf blower like the GTX 480 and chose not to.chizow - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
No, they couldn't have. Fury X is already a 275W and that's with the benefit of low temp leakage using a WC *AND* the benefit of a self-professed 15-20W TDP surplus from HBM. That means in order for Fury X to still fall 10% short of 980Ti, it is already using 25+20W, so 45W more power.Their CUSTOM cooled 7/8th cut Fury is going to be 275W typical board power as well and its cut down, so yeah the difference in functional unit power is most likely going to be the same as the difference in thermal leakage due to operating temperatures between water and custom air cooling. A hot leaf blower, especially one as poor as AMD's reference would only be able to cool a 6/8 cut Fiji or lower, but at that point you might as well get a Hawaii based card.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
Your posts don't even try to sound sane. I wrote about the GTX 480, which was designed to run hot and loud. Nvidia also couldn't release a fully-enabled chip.Ignore the point about the low-grade cooler on the 480 which ran hot and was very loud.
Ignore the point about the card being set to run hot, which hurt performance per watt (see this article if you don't get it).
How much is Nvidia paying you to astroturf? Whatever it is, it's too much.
Margalus - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
this AMD card pumps out more heat than any NVidia card. Just because it runs a tad cooler with water cooling doesn't mean the heat is not there. It's just removed faster with water cooling, but the heat is still generated and the card will blow out a lot more hot air into the room than any NVidia card.Oxford Guy - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
If you can't afford AC then stick with something like a 750 Ti. Otherwise the extra heat is hardly a big deal.zodiacfml - Saturday, July 4, 2015 - link
My excitement with HBM has subsided as I realized that this is too costly to be implemented in AMD's APUs even next year. Yet, I hope they do as soon as possible even if it would mean HBM on a narrower bus.jburns - Saturday, July 4, 2015 - link
Probably the best graphics card review I've ever read! Detailed and balanced... Thanks Ryan for an excellent review.